Conspiracies
by BobH2
Summary: Following the destruction of his real body the Jim Kirk of the Mirror Universe, who's stuck in the body of his Janice Lester, has travelled to the universe of the Federation to steal their Jim Kirk's body. But things aren't going according to plan...
1. Chapter 1

Note: This is part of an intricately interweaving series of stories that form a single, sprawling epic. See profile for reading order.

\- 1 -

I used to be James T. Kirk, captain of the ISS Enterprise, and male. Now I'm Jenna Lawson, the new Security Chief on the USS Enterprise, and female. In my own universe, a woman named Janice Lester swapped our bodies and fitted me with an undetectable 'bio-collar' that prevents me from telling anyone who I really am. Janice is dead now, killed by my science officer Mr Spock when he decided to take command of our Enterprise. Unfortunately, she was still in my body when she was vaporised, so I've travelled to this universe to steal the body of their Jim Kirk. Now that I was here all I needed to do was figure out how. The problem was I'd been here two months already and I was no closer to accomplishing this than I had been when I first arrived.

"Hello, Earth to Jenna," said a female voice. It was Nyota Uhura, the ship's communications officer.

"Sorry," I said, shaking my head, "I was miles away."

"No kidding," said an amused Christine Chapel. "You didn't react at all when I revealed my childhood 'trauma'."

"Childhood trauma?"

"Yes," said Uhura, "Christine was just telling us how other children used to mock her name."

"What's wrong with her name?"

"It rhymes with 'Sistine Chapel'," said Christine. "That's more than enough for other children to get their teeth into."

"All the years we've known each other and that had never once occurred to me," chuckled Uhura.

The three of us were sitting at a table in the ship's commisary breakfasting together as we did most mornings when our shifts aligned.

"What are your plans for your shore leave on Exitar VI?" Uhura asked Nurse Chapel.

"The usual. A bit of shopping in the bazaars, and taking in the sights with Dr McCoy. He's been here before and has agreed to show me around. Though if he doesn't get here soon I'm beaming down without him. We only have a day or two while Captain Kirk and Mr Spock negotiate a trade deal with the Exitarians so there's not time to waste. You?"

"I want to get myself an Exitarian sitar," replied Uhura. "They're reputed to be the finest in this sector."

They turned and eyed me expectantly.

"Sex," I said, "it's been too long. I need to let off some steam with a hot woman."

They both laughed at this.

"So if you and Dr McCoy are both going to be planetside, who'll be minding sickbay?" I asked Christine.

"Nurse Krishnamurgan. He's perfectly capable of handling routine stuff and can stabilise someone long enough for Dr McCoy to beam back aboard and deal with it if anything serious comes up, so I think we're covered."

Uhura looked thoughtful.

"It's intriguing that we have Admiral Cartwright along with us on this trip, yet he doesn't appear to be part of the negotiating team."

"The scuttlebutt is that this is just a private visit," said Christine. "Starfleet admirals have the clout to hitch a ride on starships, so why not use it occasionally? Perhaps he wants an Exitarian sitar, too, Nyota."

They chuckled at this and I joined in for the sake of appearances, but unlike them I knew that whatever the reason for his visit it wouldn't be frivolous. Like me, Larry Cartwright was an Empire spy. We were the first of many the Empire had started sending over to infiltrate the Federation and weaken it from within. The Admiral had replaced his counterpart, just as I hoped to one day replace mine, but unlike him I was here under false pretences. We had carefully ensured there was no obvious connection between us so an investigation of one would not expose the other, yet here he now was on the Enterprise. I still wasn't entirely sure how I'd managed to bluff my way to this universe. Had the fact I'd done so been uncovered, I wondered? Was Admiral Cartwright here to kill me by order of the Emperor? In the two days since he had been on board he had made no attempt to seek me out. Given my concerns, I was hoping things would stay that way.

It was as I was thinking this that we heard the announcement, of course.

"Lieutenant Commander Lawson to report to the conference room immediately."

"Duty calls," I said, leaving the my companions to their breakfasts.

When I arrived at the conference room I was faced by Kirk, Spock, Dr McCoy, and the Admiral himself. Kirk got straight to the point.

"Thank you for joining us, Lieutenant Commander. As you're aware, Admiral Cartwright came aboard two days ago when we rendezvoused with the USS Manchester. He's here in a purely private capacity and joined us in order to enjoy a few days vacation time on Exitar. He would prefer to do so alone, but Starfleet regulations require that anyone of his rank visiting an alien world must be accompanied at all times by an armed security officer. That being so I've tasked you with protecting him while he's on Exitar."

"Very good, sir," I replied, never taking my eyes off Kirk.

Unlike everyone else I knew the captain to be an imposter. He had given himself away when we encountered the Enterprise of the zombieverse. Oh the body was certainly that of Jim Kirk, but the mind inside it belonged to someone else. And as soon as I could figure out how to get us both to Camus II, I'd be using the alien body-swapping device there to make that body my own.

"Then the admiral is all yours. Please accompany him to the transporter room."

"I'll join you too, if you don't mind," said Dr McCoy.

"Not at all, doctor," I said.

Having the captain choose me rather than someone else to accompany Cartwright was a piece of luck, but we weren't going to be able to compare notes while McCoy was with us.


	2. Chapter 2

-2 -

Exitar was a Class M planet on the edge of what had been unexplored space until a few years earlier. When the Federation did explore it, they encountered the Tholians. Conditions on Exitar were pretty close to Earth-normal and it had a diverse population drawn from all parts of the Federation. The planet's original inhabitants had gone extinct barely a century before Federation exploration vessels had found it, killed by a plague of some sort, so colonising it was essentially a case of vacant possession with towns and cities ready for colonists to move into. Why the Tholians hadn't claimed Exitar was a mystery, but then in many ways so were the Tholians themselves.

Despite its new and diverse populace, the planet's people had quickly developed their own distinct identity as proud Exitarians, and their diversity had led to very fertile cross-cultural influence in the arts and crafts. These had become increasingly sought after by collectors and were now their main export. Not that any of this particularly interested me as Admiral Cartwright, Dr McCoy and I beamed down to the planet. We materialized on an area of red grass just outside the walls of the capital city, the clear ground providing a safer arrival point than a crowded square would have.

"Well, I think I'd better take my leave of you gentleman and locate Nurse Chapel," said McCoy. "If I know Christine she's probably already put out she had to beam down without me."

"Before you go, doctor," said Cartwright, "override Mississippi accept."

At these words Dr McCoy snapped to attention and stared straight ahead, his eyes vacant."

"Override Mississippi accepted," he replied, his voice flat. "What are my orders?"

"When you return to the Enterpise you are to destroy all the tissue samples you took during your recent encounter with that other universe nicknamed the 'zombieverse' and to make it look like an accident. No material from that universe can be allowed to survive. You will of course not remember this conversation. Confirm."

"Orders confirmed and accepted."

"Good. Override Mississippi release."

McCoy shook himself, grinned, and said:

"So I guess I'll see you back on the ship."

He went on ahead, soon passing through the city gate, while we ambled up to it at a more leisurely pace.

"What was *that*?" I asked, both stunned and intrigued by what I'd just witnessed.

"Just a little something we managed to plant in the good doctor's mind during an earlier secret mission to this universe. I'm afraid I'm not authorized to share the specifics with you."

He didn't need to. As Jim Kirk I had been on that mission along with Science Minister Sybok and the android Kara Summers. She stole the brain of the Federation's Spock in order to lure the Enterprise to Sigma Draconis VI. After the elaborate charade we'd arranged had played out and our primary objective had been achieved, Minister Sybok revealed a secondary one:

"It wasn't just surgical skills that were downloaded into McCoy's brain. No, we left a little something extra behind that should prove very useful if we ever have need of it."

So *this* was what Sybok had meant. Interesting, and potentially very useful. Now I'd been shown how to make use of that 'something extra' I filed the details away for possible future use. But I still had a question for Admiral Cartwright.

"Why destroy the tissue samples?"

"New orders from back home. They agreed with your reasons for destroying the material from the zombieverse that you did, but disagreed with your assessment that the tissue samples McCoy took could be ignored. We don't want the Federation to have any material from a parallel universe. If they do the possibility exists of them discovering every universe has a distinct, underlying quantum signature, a signature which constitutes an address and is encoded in every atom of matter from that universe. The risk of them uncovering this and eventually being able to cross to our universe at will was judged to be too great."

We had now passed through the main gate and were making our way into the back streets of the capital city. I wasn't entirely comfortable in the equatorial heat and neither was Cartwright, sweat glistening on his dark skin.

"Is it safe to speak about why you needed to visit Exitar yet, Larry?" I asked.

"I think so, yes. We haven't been followed and it doesn't appear from my tricorder readings that Enterprise is tracking us."

"Then what's going on? Our operational instructions were to steer clear of each other."

"Couldn't be helped," he said. "I had to get to this planet without arousing suspicion, and unfortunately the only way to do that was to hitch a ride on the Enterprise since she was already headed to Exitar on a routine mission. I have the authority to order any ship of the fleet here, of course, but I would have to explain myself if I did so and I needed my visit to be low-key, to look like nothing more than a casual vacation trip."

"So where are we going?"

"To a secret meeting with Klingons."

"Klingons? If you want them dead I'd be happy to kill them for you."

"Commendable enthusiasm for someone in the military let alone a supposed xenoarchaeologist, Miss Lester, but no. I need them to remain alive."

A pity. When I was captain of the ISS Enterprise I slaughtered many thousands of aliens in service of the Empire, but I always enjoyed killing Klingons most of all.

We were weaving through a crowded marketplace, so it was not entirely surprising that someone bumped into me at one point.

"Sorry," she said.

"No problem," I said.

Standard humanoid in size and shape but with pale blue skin and silver hair, she had golden eyes the same shape as those of cats, with irises to match. Her long, tough, claw-like nails looked capable of ripping a man to shreds. I recognised her as an Aragonian, an attractive people.

Her amused smile at my obvious appreciation of her made me blush. God, I needed to get laid!

Eventually we stopped at a nondescript house on a tiny sidestreet. Larry rapped out an elaborate code on the door, which then opened slightly. Someone within looked us up and down suspiciously.

"Codewords," snarled a voice.

It was rough, but clearly female.

"To be or not to be," said Larry.

"I will need your companion's weapon," said the woman.

"Give her your phaser, Jenna."

Reluctantly, I unclipped it from my belt and passed it through to her. The door was then opened wide, revealing the woman to be a Klingon. She was dressed in a military uniform. Standing inside the unfurnished room awaiting us was a man similarly attired, but of higher rank.

"Commander Chang," said Larry, offering his hand, it's good to finally meet you."

Unusually for a Klingon, Chang was shaven-headed. His left eye was covered by an eyepatch that looked as if it had been attached to his skull with rivets. Chang shook Admiral Cartwright's hand.

"You, too, Admiral," he said. Then he then turned to me.

"And who is this?"

"Lieutenant Commander Lawson, my associate. She believes as I do."

"Enchanted," said Chang, taking my hand and touching it to his lips, a dated and distinctly non-Klingon gesture he had obviously picked up from reading old Earth literature.

Behind us the other Klingon snorted. Klingon women considered human females to be ugly, I knew, an opinion not shared by all of their men.

"And that is Lieutenant Kragh," said Chang, giving a small smile.

"I'm here and personally unarmed as you requested," said Larry. "A show of good faith in light of the risk you took in travelling here and decloaking just long enough to beam down to the surface."

"I could not agree to your proposal without first meeting you," said Chang, studying him thoughtfully. "Ours are both virile, martial races, and nothing saps such virility more than peace, wouldn't you agree, Admiral?"

"I would. Peace turns wolves into sheep, sheep which will then be devoured in turn by bigger wolves. We can only survive in this universe by staying true to our essential natures, by staying wolves."

"Exactly so. Conflict is our natural state, one wherein we test ourselves against others. 'Put in their hands thy bruising irons of wrath, that they may crush down with heavy fall the usurping helmets of our adversaries'," said Chang.

"Richard the third," said Larry, "to which I'll add, 'lay on, Macduff, and damn'd be him that first cries, 'hold, enough!'"

"You know your Shakespeare, sir," said Chang, smiling appreciatively, "though you haven't truly experienced the bard until you've experienced him in the original Klingon."

"We appear to be of one mind in the matter that led us to meet," said Larry.

"We do, don't we?"

"Then it's agreed?"

"It is. This face-to-face meeting was to get the measure of each other, and you can't truly get the measure of someone until you've looked into his eyes. Now that I have, I know you to be someone I can do business with. If and when our two peoples seem to be making that terrible mistake, we shall work together to stop them."

"And our business is concluded?"

"Just so. Some might consider it foolish to come such a long way for such a short meeting, but I don't. I've learned what I needed to know."

"Then you'll be beaming out as soon as we've left?"

"We will. Goodbye, Admiral. Parting is such sweet sorrow."

Lieutenant Kragh returned my phaser and we stepped back out into the street, where we began retracing the steps that had brought us there. I had questions.

"Why bother making a secret alliance with Commander Chang?" I asked. "What does the Empire get out of this?"

"It's all about the big picture. Should peace between the Federation and the Klingons ever come to pass the two together would form a much more formidable foe than the Federation alone. The same is true for the Federation and other races they're currently in conflict with. We need to keep them apart."

"Divide and conquer."

"Exactly. There are always those of every race opposed to peace for their own reasons. To the Empire, people like Chang are useful idiots, and it's part of my mission here to cultivate them so that between us we can nip any peace efforts in the bud."

"He's not entirely wrong about warriors and peoples proving and *im*proving themselves by warring against each other, though."

"No, he's not, but while wars drive weapons development the blood and treasure expended fighting them can wreck an empire. I've been reading a lot of history since I got here, and the case of the British in the twentieth century is instructive in this regard. They started that century as the mightiest empire the world had ever seen, as they were in our world, but what were they at its end? Fighting two world wars brought their empire to its knees. The first world war exacted a cost in blood. A generation later, when it came time to fight the second, Britain's armed forces were seriously undermanned because the men her generals should have had to call on - perhaps an additional million or more - had never been born. Those who would have fathered them had been killed in that earlier conflict. Less British blood was spilled in the second world war, but it exacted a heavy cost in treasure. In order to be able to carry on fighting it, the British had to borrow heavily from the Americans. So much so that at the end of the war they were essentially bankrupt. The war lasted only six years but it took sixty to pay off that war debt. In America the myth arose that wars are good for an economy. They are when you're selling arms to others and your homeland doesn't get bombed, otherwise this is only true when they're wars of plunder."

"The history over here makes no sense to me," I said. "In our universe, Britain inherited the mantle of Rome following the success of Boudicca's revolt and the larger revolution it inspired, becoming in many ways more Roman than the Romans themselves. When Britain's American colonies fought for independence, as they did here, that rebellion was brutally put down. America remained part of the Empire, so that war debt situation never arose. Tribute was given with no repayment expected."

"And yet in many other ways our histories are the same," said the Admiral. "Khan still rose to power in the east so the Eugenics wars were fought here, too. Their Earth was just as devastated by World War Three, and in both it was Zephram Cochrane who made first contact with the Vulcans."

"Right, but whereas their Cochrane had been raised under emasculating democracy, ours had grown to manhood in an Empire. He understood that might is the only right and seized their ship."


	3. Chapter 3

\- 3 -

After Larry had beamed back up to the Enterprise I made a beeline for the local bazaar, heading for the red light district. The joys of the flesh beckoned, and it had been too long since I had last indulged my desires. Though I hated being in this female body, my universe's current Uhura had given me an appreciation of its capacity for carnal pleasure when I was her concubine.

I was navigating my way through a haze of spicy aromas, about to pass a fortune teller's tent, when the flap was thrown back. A familiar alien figure emerged.

"Ah, Captain," said the woman who had bumped into me earlier, "good. I've been expecting you."

Aragonians were noted for their alleged ability to see the future, so of course she would be working as a fortune teller.

"I don't have time for any of your flim flam," I said, annoyed at her for blocking my path, "and if you knew Federation insignia you'd know I'm not a captain."

"We both know that's not true," she said, "and yes, I can read Federation insignia."

I stopped. And studied her more closely. She was tall and beautiful, and behind her eyes I could see a shrewd intelligence.

"What is it you think you know?"

"That you don't belong here...Jim."

My eyes narrowed and I felt my stomach lurch.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"Only to help you," she said, lifting the flap of her tent and beckoning me inside.

I hesitated for a moment, but only a moment.

"My name is Cassandra," she said, as we took our place either side of the small table holding her crystal ball. "I know you're unable to tell me who you really are so I'll tell you. Your real name is James Tiberius Kirk. You come from another universe where you were captain of the ISS Enterprise. You find yourself in your current situation thanks to a woman named Janice Lester who stole your body and fitted you with something that prevents you from communicating your true identity to others in any fashion. I'd ask you to nod to confirm all this, but you're unable to do so, of course."

She knew! It was impossible, but somehow this woman knew! I stared at her in disbelief.

"Rice tea?" she said.

I nodded, more to give myself time to gather my wits than anything else, studying her as she poured us both a cup of that beverage from a small, ornately decorated ceramic flask.

"I ask you again," I said, sipping my tea, "what do you *want?"

"I want the same things you do," she said, smiling at me, "including what you came here for in the first place."

"You mean...?"

"Yes, I have always been attracted to human females. Do you find me attractive, too?"

"Very," I said.

"Then we shall couple," she replied, going over to the entrance to her tent and tying the flaps closed. "Afterwards, we shall talk further."

"Before we do, explain to me how an Aragonian ended up being named Cassandra."

"My father, the High Seer, has always been fascinated by the myths of your ancient Greeks. No more talk, now."

As she led me to an area at the rear of her tent that contained a sturdy cot-type bed large enough for two, I wondered if this might all be some sort of trap, but any reservations I might have had were overridden by the imminent prospect of sex. I would worry about traps and the like afterwards.

When we settled onto the bed, I frowned at her claws. She noticed, and laughed.

"Don't worry," she said, "I have perfect self-control. I won't damage even your most sensitive areas.

And she didn't.

"So," I said, as we lay in each other's arms afterwards, "do I get an explanation of how you know so much about me?"

"All Aragonians possess the ability to see the many possible outcomes of every decision made by an individual. We can see the futures that are open to them. Not only that, we can follow the strands of fate for others from the point where they intersect with that person. A whole web of possible futures are ours to see. Before our planet had made contact with others the only futures we could see were those for Aragon VI. As soon as contact was made with beings from other worlds the scope of what we could see was vastly increased. It's why we encourage some tourism and why we send out people to other worlds to work as fortune tellers."

"If what you're saying is true, the military implications of such a power are staggering."

"Which is why both here and in your universe we are careful never to reveal the full extent of our abilities. As fortune tellers we reveal just enough to impress."

A worrying thought came to me.

"Does your ability to see multiple future timelines enable you to direct outcomes?"

"To an extent. If we can control all the variables then, theoretically, that's exactly what we can do. Yet in another sense we have no real power at all. We can tell someone the correct path to take to achieve a particular goal, but we cannot force them to take that path. For example, I assume you came here to switch bodies with the Federation's James T. Kirk, no?"

I nodded.

"I can tell you why you shouldn't continue with your plan but you might not heed me."

"Without knowing why I certainly wouldn't," I said. "What do you know that I don't?"

"The more we followed the possible timelines of ever more people, the more of them we found converging on a terrible future, one we were determined to prevent if we could."

"What was the nature of this future?"

"That was the problem. It was big, and it was terrifying... and we couldn't get a firm fix on it. This had never happened to us before. It made no sense. While the exact nature of the threat remained vague we could follow timelines backwards from the event to determine the identities of those with the best chance of preventing that future from coming to pass. One of those individuals was James T. Kirk. We could see he would be crucial in what was to come, but there was a problem. We could also see that at the time he would be needed most, thirty years from now, he would also have apparently died. This was true in every version of his timeline we explored. It was an immutable event, one of those things that all his pathways led to. So it was decided that the only way to preserve James T. Kirk until he was needed was to give his fate to another."

"To Janice Lester," I said.

"To Janice Lester, yes. She was an angry, bitter young woman with a burning desire to be a starship captain. When she came to us we knew that here was the answer to the Kirk problem. She was told that the path to what she desired led through xenoarchaeology."

"And all the way to the alien body swapping device on Camus II," I said, nodding. "But wait. If you manipulated the Janice Lester of this universe onto that path, does that mean the Aragonians of my universe did the same?"

"Yes. Young Janice Lester arrived on Aragon IV on the same day in both universes, and in both universes she was told that the path to what she desired led through xenoarchaeology. In your universe she followed that path as a tomb raider, a criminal. In mine she studied for a doctorate and became an officially accredited archaeologist. In both she eventually took the place of Captain James T. Kirk."

"Serving alongside Kirk on the Enterprise, I soon realised he wasn't the real thing," I said, rubbing my chin thoughtfully. "It was obvious to me that someone else had taken his place. Logically, that person was probably Janice Lester. But I'd seen this universe's Janice Lester in her wedding dress when I first got here. She was marrying Arthur Coleman, she was pregnant, and she seemed almost deliriously happy at the prospect of a future spent being a wife and mother. I didn't understand how that could be so if she was really Jim Kirk."

"That's because she doesn't know she is. She was brainwashed to believe she *is* Janice Lester. It would never occur to her she had ever been anyone else."

I shuddered. We'd both been rendered unable to reveal our true identities, but suddenly the bio-collar didn't seem so bad.

"Why was I...what was the...damn it!"

"It's OK," said Cassandra, stroking my arm, "I know the question your collar won't let you ask, namely if the reason for the bodyswap in your universe was the same as in this one. And the answer is, no. In your universe, the Aragonians set Janice Lester on that path because they needed Spock to take over as captain of the ISS Enterprise, but he could only do that by killing James T. Kirk and he had sworn an oath of loyalty to you his Vulcan sense of honor would not allow him to break. The only way out of this conundrum was for you to no longer be James T. Kirk."

"Why would those other Aragonians care about Spock captaining the Enterprise?"

"Like us, they knew something big and terrifying might be coming, and like us they couldn't get a firm fix on it. However, while they were prevented from seeing exactly why, they could see that Spock needed to be captain of the Enterprise if they were to survive it and be free of the Empire. Then, last year, something happened, and everything changed. The odds of that future coming to pass increased dramatically, it became almost a certainty. And we now knew what that future was."

"What happened?" I asked, now fully caught up in Cassandra's tale. The more she revealed the more I found myself believing her.

"A wall between universes was breached, and a door opened that has let that future in. You were one of those who opened that door. Prior to the breach, the fate of the Empire was known to the other Aragonians. It would eventually collapse as all empires do, and three hundred years from now it would be gone. That is no longer the case. The breach changed everything. Now, unless it is stopped, the Empire could go on forever because there's something that since the breach appears in every potential future we can see. It's an immutable event, and there's nothing anyone can do to prevent it from happening."

"What is that event?"

"War between the Empire and the Federation."

"Good. That's something I want to see."

"I know."

"Yes, you do. You know an awful lot. You've told me about how Aragonians can see possible futures, but not about seeing someone's past."

"That's because we can't. Our sight only enables us to see their futures."

"So that means you must've been seeing my possible futures since my Janice Lester first came to you?"

"Correct. But two other things happened when the wall between universes was breached. Firstly, we and the other Aragonians became one, each of us with a body in both but what was essentially a single, combined mind in constant communication with its counterpart. And secondly, for reasons we don't understand, you became a wild card."

"A wild card? What does that mean, exactly?"

"Someone whose possible futures we can no longer see. It's extremely rare, but it does happen occasionally. A wild card with your potential to disrupt could not be allowed to exist in your universe and plans were made to eliminate you. These became unnecessary when you attempted to bluff your way to this universe. All that was needed was to confirm you were indeed following secret orders as you claimed."

"Only someone very high up in the Empire could have provided that confirmation," I said. "Who was it?"

"Science Minister Sybok."

"Sybok? But why? I don't understand..."

"Sybok is a Vulcan separatist who wants to see the Empire fall."

"He and his brother Spock were allowed to rise higher than any other Vulcans," I said, furious at this news, "and *this* is how he repays us? With treachery? Of all the ungrateful... He has to be exposed."

"He already has been," said Cassandra, "by me. My counterpart got the required evidence to the Emperor, while keeping the involvement of the Aragonians out of it."

I was confused.

"Why would you do that?"

"Because unlike our fellow Aragonians of both universes who want to see the Empire fall, my counterpart and I believe it has to live."

"Explain."

"Our universes exist in a multiverse, but beyond the multiverse lies the omniverse which is, if you like, a multiverse of multiverses. Even the most powerful of Aragonians can perceive only the barest hint of a shadow of the future when it comes to things happening on that level of reality. My counterpart and I *are* powerful Aragonians and though what we've perceived amounts to little more than a feeling, we believe our multiverse will eventually face a threat from the omniverse so overwhelming that only a strong, confident, multiverse-spanning Empire has a chance against it. We voiced our concerns about this threat to our peoples, but they were dismissed. Which brings us to you. I need a wild card, someone whose possible futures are undetectable, as a safeguard against the Empire falling. And I need you female."

"And what I need - what I want - is to be a man again," I said. "War between the Federation and the Empire is coming, but that war is still decades away. From what you've told me, the Jim Kirk of this universe will die before then. If I become him, his death will be my death. So my choice is between a couple of decades as him or a full lifetime as Janice Lester."

"You don't have that choice," said Cassandra. "You don't actually have any choice at all."

"What do you mean?"

"By now Minister Sybok will be dead and Empire security forces will be rounding up and executing his associates. When they discover he was responsible for you being sent here they'll assume you were working with him. I don't give much for your chances of getting Jim Kirk to Camus II and switching bodies with him before Empire agents over here track you down."

"You've signed my death warrant," I said, licking my lips nervously. "There's nowhere I can run to where they won't find me."

"There is one place."

"Where?"

"The future."


	4. Chapter 4

\- 4 -

"On my location, two to beam up," I said into my communicator, and a few seconds later we materialized in Enterprise's transporter room.

"Is that a cat?" asked the transporter chief.

He was staring dubiously at the occupant of the transporter pad next to mine.

"Indeed it is," I said, picking up the cage containing the beast and stepping down from the transporter pad platform. "His name is Rusty. Please have him and my shoulder bag taken to the shuttle flight deck. I'll be taking a shuttle out shortly and I'll need them both with me."

"Very good, ma'am."

"Is Dr McCoy back yet?"

"Yes, he and Nurse Chapel returned from the planet surface about half an hour ago. I heard her say she was going to her quarters. He went directly to sickbay."

"Excellent, thank you."

I needed to see McCoy without Christine being present, so this was perfect.

McCoy's eyes lit up when the door whooshed open and I entered sickbay. He looked pleased to have a potential 'customer'.

"Ah, Lieutenant Commander Lawson. Good to see you, Jenna. What can this old sawbones do for you today?"

"I've decided I don't care for my altered features. I'd like my old face restored."

"That shouldn't be a problem. Based on the examination I conducted when you first joined the crew, the alterations were relatively minor and will be easy to undo. Shouldn't take me hardly any time at all. Let me just call Nurse Chapel."

"That won't be necessary, doctor," I said. "Override Mississippi accept."

At these words Dr McCoy snapped to attention and stared straight ahead as he had on the planet, his eyes just as vacant.

"Override Mississippi accepted," he replied, his voice flat. "What are my orders?"

"You will restore my face not to the image in my medical file but to that in Janice Lester's. You will do this without questioning why and without any assistance from Nurse Chapel. You will also inject me with the therogen derivative you formulated to counter the effect on the brain of the temporo-spatial fractures in Tholian territory. When you've done all that, I need you to delete my medical files and another fifty or so adjacent to them. Make this all look like some form of systems failure. Your memory after all this will be that you restored my face to look like the image in my medical file. You will of course not remember this conversation. Confirm."

"Orders confirmed and accepted."

"Good. Override Mississippi release."

McCoy shook himself, smiled, and said:

"Right, lie down please and we'll soon get this done."

It's a tribute to the medical technology of this century that within thirty minutes, my face restored and healed, I was heading for the shuttle flight deck. I kept my head down so that no monitor would capture a full-face image of me. Since many here knew what Janice Lester looked like, it had been necessary to have my face altered before I came aboard. Not by much - I still resembled her - but enough that everyone would assume that resemblance to be accidental. Details of the procedure McCoy had performed on me would be automatically uploaded to Jenna Lawson's medical file. There was nothing I could do about that, but I could make sure they were never seen by anyone else. Whenever we made contact with another starship vessel such files were routinely copied between us and, eventually, would find their way to the central database at Starfleet Headquarters. By instructing McCoy to delete my files and to disguise that fact by destroying another fifty, I'd ensured the fact I now had Janice Lester's face would go no further. Eventually, copies of the missing medical files would make their way back from Starfleet to the Enterprise, of course, but mine would predate my procedure.

When I entered the shuttle flight deck, I gave a sigh of relief. My luck was holding. As the crew manifest had promised, the crewman currently overseeing it was Lieutenant Nyongo. He didn't know me and had not been on Enterprise either of the two times Janice Lester was aboard, so he would notice nothing different about my appearance.

As I crossed the deck to my shuttle - the Vasco de Gama - so Lieutenant Nyongo emerged from it.

"Is my stuff aboard?" I asked.

"Yes, ma'am, and I've just completed all the pre-flight checks. You're good to go."

"Thank you, Lieutenant."

I entered the craft, closed the hatch behind me, and climbed into the pilot's chair. Tholian space, here I come.

As soon as the shuttle was clear of Enterprise I turned the automatic pilot on and slid a datacard into the slot on the control console. This contained all the navigational and other details my flight would follow from here on out. It had been programmed by Cassandra after months of carefully following Rusty the cat's many possible futures. Doing so enabled her to see the consequences of every alternate turn and slight change in direction and velocity of the shuttle until she had plotted my course through that fractured region of Tholian space. This would both take me to the future and have me pop out there in exactly the right location. Oh, and that's why she had given me Rusty, of course. Me being a wild card, she could not see my potential futures, so without another living being accompanying me plotting that course would have been impossible for her.

I stepped away from the pilot's chair and grabbed my shoulder bag. In it was a uniform from Cassandra, one of a different rank to my own.

"I made this for you," she said when she gave it to me.

"It must've taken you ages," I'd said, impressed, "but I could have had a replicator on Enterprise whip one up in seconds and saved you the effort."

"Yes, but replicators keep a record of what they create and who ordered those things. It's important for there to be no record. This way there isn't."

I quickly stripped off the uniform I was wearing and donned the other, pleased to swap the hosiery and ludicrously short skirt of my Starfleet uniform for something more sensible. That done I returned to the pilot's chair. Exitar was sufficiently close to Tholian space that within thirty minutes I had crossed their border and was approaching the area of temporally and dimensionally fractured space I'd aimied the shuttle at.

It was time.

I opened a communications channel.

"Enterprise, Enterprise, come in Enterprise. Mayday, mayday! This is Lieutenant Commander Jenna Lawson aboard shuttlecraft Vasco de Gama. Controls are non-responsive and the craft is headed at high velocity for the area of space where the USS Defiant was lost. I repeat, mayday, mayday, assistance required."

I'd left it late enough that there was no possibility of Enterprise reaching me before I was in that area of space. This way there would be no mystery about the tragic loss of Jenna Lawson. It would be recorded by Starfleet as some combination of mechanical malfunction and pilot error.

I was minutes away now, so there was one final thing I needed to do. Just approaching that space caused changes in the human brain that resulted in uncontrollable rage. Thanks to the therogen derivative Dr McCoy had injected me with I'd been spared that rage, but what the effects might be of travelling through it was uncertain. Cassandra believed I'd experience hallucinations and so need to strap myself down "just as Odysseus tied himself to the mast of his ship so he would not be lured onto rocks by the song of the sirens". I agreed with her.

I moved to the rear of the shuttle, taking one of those seats that were also equipped for prisoner transport.

"Computer, authorisation Lawson five alpha bravo. Secure me to seat six and do not release me until we return to normal space. Ignore any further commands I give you to the contrary."

"Affirmative."

Metal bands snapped out of the armrests and locked my wrists in place.

And then we were sliding between the fractures of an area where space itself had been ripped apart. We were immediately wildly buffeted about and strange, unearthly light flooded into the shuttle. The buffeting soon eased, while the light remained. It was distracting but, so far, not a problem.

"The future?" said a voice. It was my voice, ringing out from nowhere and everywhere.

"Yes, the future. Thirty years from now when the Empire is just about to launch its invasion of the Federation."

That voice was Cassandra's and this was part of the conversation we had had in her tent on Exitar.

"Audio hallucinations," I murmured, "pulled from my memory."

Then I heard laughter.

"Ah Jim...Jim, Jim, Jim. You're making this too easy. I expected better of you. At the very least, a man should be able to hold on to his manhood."

The voice was female, Janice Lester's voice, but when it spoke next it was male; it was Jim Kirk's voice.

"You let your guard down, Jim, and I seized my opportunity. That's how things are done on board your starship, how they're done throughout the Terran Empire."

These were the words Janice taunted me with when she stole my body, words now come back to haunt me.

"I've come up with a complete cover story for when you get to the future."

This was Cassandra's voice again.

"And what do you expect me to do there?"

"What you've been doing here, acting as a spy and working to ensure the victory for the Empire. But you're also my fail-safe for if things go wrong. I'll contact you in that future. Aragonians are a very long-lived race so to your eyes I will hardly appear to have aged."

The laughter returned, the triumphant laughter of Janice Lester in my body.

"If it was my destiny to become Jim Kirk, clearly it was just as much your destiny to end up as Janice Lester. So we're both now who we're supposed to be, and Camus II is where our new lives begin."

"No, not my destiny, not my destiny at all!" I shouted, pulling at my restraints, dimly realising the rage that had finally hit me was not my fault but being unable to control it.

The voice became sneering and contemptuous.

"Never again will you be tall, muscular, and commanding. What you are now - a small, soft, vulnerable woman - is what you will be for the rest of your days."

"No!" I yelled, "No! No!"

If I could have blocked my ears I would have.

"Every time you see your pretty face in a mirror I want you to remember that by letting your guard down, by being too trusting, you *earned* that face. You're female because you deserve to be."

"No, no, I don't!" I frantically protested. "I'm a man, a man! I don't deserve to be a woman!"

"You deserve to be because you allowed yourself to be fooled, to be bested, by a woman. Your manhood is now my manhood. You lost it to me, and I'm keeping it. Men used to follow you into battle. Now no self-respecting man would follow you anywhere but into bed. So, Janice, how does it feel to be Mrs Coleman?"

What? The question shocked me back to my senses.

"Wonderful, but I'm keeping my own surname. This is the twenty-third century, after all."

"Quite right, too."

This was no longer me and her it was *them*, the Jim Kirk and Janice Lester of the Federation. The segue had happened seamlessly.

"How about you? Are you looking forward to getting back out there?"

"Like you would not believe. I was born to be the captain of a starship. Adventuring out among the stars is where I belong."

"I've got an adventure of my own coming up in nine months."

"Nine...does that mean?"

"Yes, I'm pregnant."

"That was quick. I'm impressed."

"I told you Arthur and I had a lot of lost time to make up for, and we have been."

"Good for you, good for you, good for you, good for you, good for you, good..."

The voices faded away, as did the swirling lights. Quite suddenly we were in normal space again, spat out of a temporal whirlpool that was rapidly closing behind us, leaving the shuttlecraft drifting aimlessly.

We were back in normal space, and I was free of my restraints. But we were not alone.

Bearing down on us was a Federation starship, but larger than I was used to and of more advanced design. The shuttlecraft was floating somewhat above the plane of the saucer section, so I was able to clearly read the name on it: USS Endurance.

This was it. Time for the next chapter of my long, strange journey to begin. I opened a hailing frequency.

"Greetings," I said, "I'm Janice Lester, captain of the USS Enterprise, and I need your help to rescue my husband, Jim Kirk."

"""""""""""""

The End

"""""""""""""


End file.
